Taking a Smarter Approach to How We Work and Live
Despite greater autonomy with how we fill the moments of our day, there is an increase in burnout.
I was recently asked to write 250 words on what work meant to me. If you asked that question to someone 150 years ago, you’d get a strange look. Work was something that was done to get a wage and try to survive: it was repetitive and monotonous in the industrial age.
Today, knowledge workers have more autonomy than ever before. We are left to define how we fill each minute of our working day. Yet, despite this freedom, we have seen an alarming increase in worker burnout, intensified by the pandemic.
Burnout is a serious problem facing organisations. Initiatives like Zoom-free Fridays and No-email Tuesdays have been common, while governments have debated more far-reaching proposals like a shorter working week (which was recently implemented in the UAE for federal employees). As well-intended as they are, I don’t believe they solve the burnout facing many knowledge workers.
Instead, we need to look at the underlying issues of burnout. I see two key issues. The first is physical - the sheer volume of work. The second is mental – our modern-day culture of embracing speed and hustle.
Too much work short-circuits our brains
The computer science professor and New York Times bestselling author of ‘A World Without Email’ Cal Newport has been a leading voice on how we can work smarter in our new age. His ideas and proposals are worth repeating.
In a recent podcast, Newport spoke about a neurological region in our brain that specialises at looking at what we need to get done and creating a long-term plan to do it. It’s unique to humans and why we feel satisfaction when we accomplish a task. However, when we have too many tasks to complete – excessive work volume – that part of the brain begins to short-circuit, creating anxiety.
Another important aspect highlighted by Newport is what he calls the cost of ‘overhead spiral’ associated with knowledge work. Working with others is an essential part of our job. For a task or project, ongoing activities such as meetings, calls and emails are necessary. These are the overheads and they are perfectly reasonable. But as organisations add more and more tasks and projects to an individual’s plate, these meetings and emails spiral out of control until all someone is doing are Zoom meetings and back-and-forth emails all day. There’s no room for anything else. Anxiety reigns.
His solution is to reduce work volume.
Organisations need to do more in organising work
Reducing work volume is a daunting task, but just because something is hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t attempt to tackle it. As Newport says, “in the world of work, what’s easiest is rarely what’s most effective.”
Newport argues organisations need to do more in helping keep someone’s work at a sustainable level. Organisations could achieve this by assigning work sequentially, so people work on a smaller number of important tasks, complete them, before moving on to the next (rapidly switching between tasks takes time and energy). Think of it like a triage system in hospital emergency rooms. What’s most important gets done first.
Technology helps companies in this approach today, with digital tools like personal Kanban and Trello. These tools create better workflows to organise and assign tasks, with more automation and less context-shifting, resulting in less distracted and more focused workers.
It’s not about organisations doing less. It’s about the individuals in that organisation being given help to find a smarter and more productive way that maintains their autonomy. And it’s likely they will produce a higher quality of work as a result, with no spiralling overheads or feelings of anxiety associated with too heavy a workload.
Let people do what they do well. Then give them the next thing to work on.
This type of approach isn’t easy or quick. Leaders of organisations will need to devote time to think and figure this out, experiment in smaller groups, run pilots. It’s hard, but the results could be significant: less-stressed individuals, working and building their craft, being more productive, more focused, happier and fulfilled. And that will impact the bottom line too.
Slowing down helps us become more creative
Going hand in hand with the reduction in work volume is a commitment by the individual to slow down. To move away from the all-too-common ‘crazy busy’ response.
Jennifer Roberts is an art history teacher at Harvard University. The first assignment she gives her students is to visit a local museum and choose a painting or sculpture. They must then look at it for three straight hours. No checking email or social media, no going for coffee. Just intent focus for three hours.
Roberts sees this assignment as a critical life lesson for her students – to resist the urge to hurry. She knows they face so many external pressures to move fast. She gives them a different set of rules, permission to slow down, to take things in and focus on the craft.
At various stages during the assignment, the chosen art reveals things the eye didn’t see at first. That leads to new thoughts and perspectives. Students learn the satisfaction from the doing itself.
The Dutch have something called ‘niksen’, which is intentionally taking time and energy to do activities like gazing out a window. They understand the scientific research that by allowing our minds to wander, we become more creative and better at problem-solving. We gain greater clarity and are more in charge of our emotions, leading to better decision-making.
Shifting the perception of guilt
This concept of slowing down feels at odds with how successful modern lives are built. People may feel guilty about adjusting their pace. They shouldn’t. It’s not really slowing down. It’s being smarter and more strategic in our approach to daily life, recognising we can’t do everything and instead should focus on a smaller number of things that are most meaningful to us. Reducing our own volume.
There are solutions to burnout at both the organisational and individual level. Achieving them requires a commitment to further discussion and action on the innovative ideas being proposed, and the individual discipline and acceptance that life can be rich and fulfilling without the need to feel we need to do everything in the world at breakneck pace.
As Socrates said, “beware the barrenness of a busy life.”